


You Will Always Come Back to the Forest

by Shinaka



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Drabble, F/M, Friendship, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2019-08-21 21:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16584929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinaka/pseuds/Shinaka
Summary: A collection of Grantedshipping drabbles based on various prompts. Overall, drabbles will center on the themes of forgiveness, coming of age, and the capacity of people to change. Will always be marked as completed but drabbles will continue to be added from time to time.#3: AphroditeBased on the prompt:Aphrodite: my character falls in love with yours.





	1. #1: Non-Interference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #1: Non-Interference
> 
> Based on the prompt:
> 
> (I won’t say) I’m in Love: my character falls in love with yours, but is too afraid to admit it.

He is ten years too old for her, and she has only turned fourteen. But that does not stop his pulse from quickening when she is around, or his visits to the Forest from turning more frequent and protracted with each stay. When blond hair dances in the wind, he cannot pull away from the sight, even as it burns him and reveals him weak – too weak.

 

"Lance," she would murmur, whenever she saw him come by, or "Lance!" she would scream, whenever she looked up at the flap of Dragonite wings. And he relishes the sound even as he knows it only signals further defeat at the young girl's hands.

 

He will not say anything for now. Their truce has only become stable, and he does not want to thrust a grown man's complicated feelings into their already tangled up history, fraught with ideological conflicts that would have burned Kanto through and through.

 

So he will watch and he will wait.


	2. #2: Magnet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #2: Magnet
> 
> Based on the prompt:
> 
> Talk: A drabble (main or AU) about our characters having a conversation.

 

"Please don't go, Lance," she pleads with him, voice barely a whisper. The girl has her hands clasped tightly together as if the strength of muscle contraction alone will determine his decision in her favor.

 

And as he stares at Yellow, watery yet steely eyes boring into his, he thinks that it might work.

 

A small voice in the back of his mind adds sardonically, _She always wins in the end, doesn’t she?_

 

He grits his teeth against the underlying accusation.

 

Two years ago, he thought himself above all humanity for his compassion and fervor for building a world free for pokemon and free of human taint. However, he finds himself struggling not to crack under a too-human desire.

 

"I'll make sure the others accept you," Yellow's continuing, voice growing louder and surer. "I know you've changed, you really have! But you can't hide from people forever! We're friends now, aren't we?"

  

She's ten years too young, he has to remind himself. Yellow doesn't know that not all humans are as pure – and naive – as her. But there will be plenty of time to change for her mind to change. She will grow up and she will learn. Then maybe she won’t hand out second chances as freely as candy to just anybody, to those who would only take and take.

 

_He_ won’t abuse this opportunity. If he stays, others won’t abuse her trust either.

 

"Yes, we are," he finally says.

 

When the healer beams at him from behind the brim of her straw hat, he allows himself to smile back.


	3. #3: Aphrodite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #3: Aphrodite
> 
> Based on the prompt:
> 
> Aphrodite: my character falls in love with yours.

It is not the first time nor will it be the last that Yellow sees Lance in the Forest.

 

But it is the first time her heart thumps violently upon seeing him.

 

When he alights on the ground proper, stepping off Dragonite like a prince returning to his kingdom, Yellow also flushes from head to toe. In the span of one night's dream, she has gone from viewing Lance as a sometimes mentor, sometimes comrade to a man who might –

 

She doesn’t even dare think the words.

 

Before the thought of escaping even coalesces into a real possibility, Yellow’s fixed immediately into place when the dragon tamer notices her and frowns. “What are you doing cowering over there?”

 

“I, uh, I was coming over to meet you and uh…” The girl tries to meet his eyes, golden like hers, and settles for staring at a point above his head. Chu-chu nudges her head against Yellow’s ankle, well-meaning and kind. But not even that gesture, soft yet staticky, can bring the healer back from the awkwardness of having words fail her around someone she could usually talk to; a bond with no peer birthed from one near cataclysm that pitted the two against each other and many missions thereafter where the other was the only person they could rely on.

 

“And then what?” He is coming closer, Dragonite at his heels. Lance doesn’t smile often, but his tone is light enough for Yellow to know that he is in a jovial, if snarky, mood today.

 

The fact that she knows him well enough to sense this is somehow enough to weaken her knees.

 

“Then we’re going to, uh, help!” 

 

Yellow rushes over before her mind can seize up and arrest all movement again. Lance only shakes his head, but amusement glimmers in his eyes.

 

When the girl comes near, still small and short even for seventeen, the dragon tamer gently lays his hand on her head. A sweet gesture, made all the more so by how rare it is. If reddening like a Magcargo is what the Forest wants her to do, then she is passing with all the violent shades of red she can muster.

 

Then when Yellow is soaring in the air, clutching Lance’s waist from behind while her legs straddle Dragonite’s back, she wonders if she can really let that dream stay a dream. Even if Lance only sees her as a partner for protecting the Forest, even if she is ten years too young, even if she is only walking down the path to embarrassment.

 

She leans into his back. She whispers, “I think I’m in l-“

 

She cannot summon the word quite yet. But it feels right inside. 

 

* * *

 

In the part of the dream that she can bear to remember while holding onto Lance in the sky, Yellow is doing this:

 

She is on a bed with Lance under white covers set in the middle of the Forest, hovering over a river on a hillock. They are holding hands while the Forest buzzes, chirrups, and whistles with activity from Pokemon, all alive and happy, including the Dratini that Lance had one day told Yellow about as he walked ahead of her and would not turn around as he spoke.

 

And he is smiling, and it is pure and even effervescent, as that small and lovely Dratini glides around the two of them, squeaking happily.

 

_“Thank you for this."_


End file.
